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New Wind Turbines Coming to Nueces County
Posted: Nov 27, 2012 5:33 PM by Caroline Flores - cflores@kristv.com
Updated: Nov 28, 2012 11:35 AM
CORPUS CHRISTI - Nueces County will be seeing a new set of wind turbines near Petronila. The Naval Air Station in Kingsville signed an agreement with the company wanting to build the turbines today.
Nueces County will be seeing a new set of wind turbines near Petronila. The Naval Air Station in Kingsville signed an agreement with the company wanting to build the turbines today. That's because the Navy was hesitant to have a wind farm full of turbines so close to their Kingsville base, which is mainly used to train pilots.
Here's why it's a problem, wind turbines are as tall as 500 feet. At NAS Kingsville pilots fly as low as 500 feet to the ground while how to fly off ships into the open sea. With planes and wind turbines at the same level, the turbines also interfere with the radars that show where aircrafts are.
The radars the Navy uses can pick up anything that goes faster than 66 mph, wind turbines can go as fast as 100. So the radar was picking up the turbines as aircrafts causing confusion at the base.
"We made this promise very early on. Was that if we were gonna threaten this mission we decided we would not build this project," said Patrick Woodson with E.On Climate & Renewables.
After 10 months of negotiation the Navy came up with an agreement to allow the Petronila Wind Farm to put up 100 turbines and keep pilots in training safe.
"They have not leased any land from land owners that would be in that area where our planes would be really low to the ground and could physically hit one of those," said NAS Kingsville Commanding Officer Mark McLaughlin.
The company is giving the base $750,000 for updates and research so the turbines don't cause any more issues with their radars. A construction date for the new turbines has not yet been set.
The name of the Petronila Wind Farm has been changes to the Patriot Wind Farm as a thank you to the Navy for being so cooperative.
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